Providing strong support and guidance to promising pre- and post-doctoral students is crucial for the advancement of all fields of science. The overall goal of this competing renewal of R13 HL074923 is to provide travel support for trainees to attend and actively take part in the 69th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society (APS) in San Antonio, Texas (March 9 - 12, 2011). The essential mission of the APS is to promote and advance the scientific understanding of the interrelationships among biological, psychological, social and behavioral factors in human health and disease, and the integration of the fields of science that separately examine each, and to foster the application of this understanding in education and improved health care. This mission is instantiated in the selection of the theme for the 2011 meeting, "Understanding Mechanisms and Improving Interventions," which will highlight empirical research and clinical applications along the translational continuum. For greater than 60 years, the annual APS meeting has provided an outstanding forum for trainees and established investigators and clinicians working within a wide range of disciplines and specialty areas to exchange new ideas and research strategies that ultimately facilitate and improve the quality of research and its translation into clinical practice and public policy. The annual APS meeting is attended by over 500 researchers and clinicians from around the world. In this competing renewal, we propose to provide support for up to 15 Young Scholar Awards and 5 Minority Initiative Travel Awards. The Young Scholars Award Program will provide travel awards to competitively- selected trainees who submit a first-author abstract to present a paper or poster and who are judged to show outstanding potential for a career in psychosomatic and behavioral medicine. The APS Minority Initiative Travel Award will provide support for promising trainees from racial/ethnic or other underrepresented groups to attend the annual meeting. The process of identifying and selecting APS Minority Initiative Travel Award recipients will differ, as this award seeks to extend trainee award opportunities to individuals who are not yet "stakeholders" in the process. The meeting's location in San Antonio will capitalize on regional expertise in Latino health and health disparities, which has not been strongly represented on previous programs. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Providing strong support and guidance to promising pre- and post-doctoral students is crucial for the advancement of all fields of science. This competing renewal of R13 HL074923 proposes to provide travel support for up to 20 trainees to attend the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society (APS).